What are some alternatives to the book "Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach"?
The following 2 books helped me understand the basics and guided me through my first AI / CI implementations.

Computational Intelligence: An Introduction by Andries P. Engelbrecht
It includes the most relevant developments in computational intelligence with good discussions on intelligence and artificial intelligence (AI).

Computational Intelligence: Concepts to Implementation by Russell C. Eberhart and Yuhui Shi
It is a comprehensive textbook, supported with lots of practical examples.